


a shine

by More_night



Category: The Lighthouse (2019)
Genre: Horror, M/M, quote-unquote tentacle sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-27 14:37:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20409412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/More_night/pseuds/More_night
Summary: Thomas Wake finds Ephraim Winslow on the shore after a storm. Ephraim is not what he seems.





	a shine

* * *

Thomas Wake has known already much about himself that he's forgotten. It's this work. Lightkeeping don't look like it, but it takes everything you have; there's the light of course, it's easy, he can do that in the morning--although this morning... did he do it this morning? Yes, yes of course he did: changed the wick, checked the burners, replenished the colza oil. But there is also everything else out there. What would that be? you'd ask--it's only an island, right? I mean, it's so small, rocks and water and sand and sand and water and rocks. At that point, Thomas would look oddly at you. As if there was only water in water. There's all that comes with the water.

You'd think, Well what? Boats, or debris, or the thick, forest green plants that grow at the bottom of seas, whatever they're called... Thomas would say, It's called _seaweed_. Here, there's kelp on the east side, the creek, and there'll be some Irish moss on the north shore. What you're thinking about is wrack--washes up on shores a lot. Serrated leaves, Thomas says, tough fronds.

Fronds? you'd say. How do you know all that? Thomas doesn't really know anymore. You learn a lot and then you forget a lot. Just this morning, he tells you, he had to search for his papers, read his name off of them, say it to himself in the mirror. It's the isolation, Thomas, you'd say. It's not for you. Thomas agrees: isolation isn't good. Except he isn't alone at all out here.

Of course, he's alone, isn't he? There's only the sea out here after all; the sea's no one, the sea doesn't live here with him, it is here like the ground or like the sky. It doesn't talk.

There, Thomas would just laugh at you. The sea doesn't talk--boy, that's a good one. Have you ever heard a storm roar, the winds hiss your name, the waves run after you on the beach after you've slipped on the rocks...

Thomas doesn't want to talk with you anymore. He has to make his way back to the southern beach. If you ask why, he'd tell you there was a storm last night and there might have been something coming in the storm. Like what? Like broken timbers, treasure chests--a boat, a raft? Thomas would shake his head. Then what?

But Thomas has stopped talking. The bay is becalmed, tranquil. If you'd cry after Thomas, What's been coming in the storm? he wouldn't care, he wouldn't turn around. 

A storm comes from the horizon. It must be early in the season. The clouds squat over the island for a day and rain their water like the lighthouse was an anemone. It smells cold and crisp. The winds are ecstatic.

Thomas has kept watch all night. He's tired in a manner that no sleep could aid: he doesn't trust the air, he examines the clouds as if they'd disappear without his eyes on them. He doesn't know this storm. He's never felt one like that before.

Could just be a new one. A child running around, trying its strength on every brick, every wall and every cliff. No windows are broken, no planks are pulled, no stones are dislodged. Very young. An infant of stormery crying with its lungs whole a shapeless complaint at the ground. It has no idea why it's here, and it strives to go back whence it came: upwards, out there, in that darkness.

Could be. Or could be something else.

He inspects the shore again, keeping the southern beach for last.

What if there is food? you think. What if there is rescue, finally? What if Thomas can finally leave?

And where would I go?

You can't go back home, can you? you say. Not after what you've done, yes? Thomas would stop then and if you were there, he'd ask you: what is that, uh? What is that I have done?

Thomas doesn't find rescue. He finds a man, naked, having clawed his way up the shore, his fingers leaving fading markings in the wet soil. There is mud caking his hair, there is sand in his mouth, as if he's climbed out of the ocean floor. Thomas brings him to the house. He's light on his shoulder: a young man, not quite an adolescent any longer, but just fresh out of his growing. He doesn't wake up while Thomas cleans the sand. His mouth was so full of it, Thomas wonders how he could breathe at all. The man's skin is persistently wet, like it's coated in oil or algae, with a shine to it in the lamplight.

"My name..."

The man thinks, but he can't answer. "Maybe you were a sailor, fell during the storm from the rigs, hit your head," Thomas says.

"My dad was a sailor."

"Good. Good. So you know boats?"

"Yes. But I don't like them."

"Mh. Not a sailor yourself then. Ever been to Nantucket? Provincetown? Falmouth?"

"Only thing I remember is the floor--of the ocean. It's like earth. I was walking there. There was trees and a small yellow sun high up above."

"Oh you hit your head alright. No ground to the ocean, boy. Not in these here parts--s'too deep."

"Is this your home then?"

"I'm the only one here, yeah."

"No one with you? For the lighthouse?"

"Nope."

"Aren't you lonely, on your own out here?"

"I guess. But I wanted that job. Seemed good. To get away from people."

"I understand that, sure. I don't like my folks much either."

"Your folks aren't here. You can be sure of that. Anyone's on this island, I'd know."

"Ephraim Winslow. That's my name."

They shake hands and Thomas gives him a pipe carved from whalebone. He needs to show him how to fill it, press on the tobacco with his thumb, how to set fire to it while breathing in, how to keep the fire on. The next day, he uses his last oak planks to make a second chair.

Thomas prepares the lighthouse for another storm. He covers his kitchen garden with sail canvas and pins it down with rocks as big as he can lift. He empties the trunks he uses to collect rain water in their barrels and stores all of it back inside. Then he shuts and bars the doors. He boards up the windows with the strongest wood he has. The light in the tower he has turned off. After so many times, he's become convinced that it angers them--the storms--if the light is still on and they last longer. Maybe they try and drown it out, like candlelight.

In all this, Ephraim helps him like the stalwart assistant he's become. There's something with the young man alright; something off. Like he isn't fully grown or grown too much or something. There are some things that Thomas has to explain that he shouldn't have to explain, he thinks.

But the company does him good.

He prepares to sit the storm out. He has a chosen spot for it. He crouches on the ground with his back to the windows by the stove. The lantern, he leaves by his side, with the wick as short as it can be so the fire won't spread if it's knocked over. Ephraim sits there with him even though it's tight for two men.

When the thunder starts and the lightning strikes, Thomas shuts his eyes. He doesn't hear Ephraim leaving. Only Ephraim's shoulder no longer touches his arm. He opens his eyes. The door has been flung open. Water rushes in. It's at the table already. Thomas yells at the door, his voice mute in the chaos. But Ephraim doesn't come back.

In the morning, Thomas goes on to the southern shore. He finds Ephraim already there, soaking wet, his clothes battered on his body, clinging to him like sailrope that's twisted around a mast. Ephraim walks with a wooden stick.

He exhibits the stick. "Found this. Tha's wood from a tree at the bottom. Won't break." He swings the stick at a the ridge of a granite slab. It bounces off. "It's good for walking. We used that all the time-"

Thomas holds him so that their face are close. Braces his cheeks with his thumbs.

Lord, lord. He thought Ephraim was gone. "The storm..." he says, holding him. "Don't..."

"S'okay," Ephraim hushes. "S'okay. I found the stick. We'll be fine."

"Thomas, why don't we turn on the light anymore?"

"I'm thinking the storms might be coming for it. If it's off, we might just have a little peace."

"What do we do with the peace?"

"We can leave. Build a boat. Small, for the two of us. If we take the house down, pretty sure we can do that."

"How'd you get back to the bottom of the sea with a boat? You'd need to sink it, and then why not just swim down? Boat're just trouble..."

Thomas goes back to braiding strips of tarred canvas into ropes. There's no getting it out of Ephraim--this idea that he came from the sea. From the bottom of it, where he says the ground is so soft there's no need for shoes; where there are fruits to eat, growing in caverns and atolls; and where the air breathes easier than up here.

Ephraim doesn't run during the next storm. He stays by the stove with Thomas holding his hand. It's been faint and it's grown in degrees, sure, but now he couldn't lose Ephraim. If Ephraim leaves, Thomas thinks, I'll go to the southern beach and walk down the shore with a chain to weight me down, down until the bottom of the sea. Ephraim lets Thomas hold him. When the winds grow vicious and whistling, once the rain is over, it's Ephraim holding Thomas's hand.

Morning comes, golden light beaming through metallic clouds. Ephraim is asleep, soundly so, like an infant. Thomas has watched him all night. Ephraim was listening to the drafts, shaking with the waves of rain licking their walls, trembling with the bolts of thunder like they came from his hand. Besotted, Thomas would say. Enraptured. 

Thomas rises, waking Ephraim.

"Don't go," Ephraim says.

"I need to..."

"To what?"

"See about the island. See what the storm's brought."

"Why?"

"That's how I found you."

Ephraim pulls on Thomas's hand strongly and Thomas stumbles back down. Ephraim settles him by his side. His eyes search Thomas's face. Ephraim doesn't seem young anymore: there are a thousand, a million things on his face. When Ephraim's gaze sets on Thomas, Thomas feels the way one must feel when the lighthouse's light finds them out on the sea: found. Found and blinded.

Ephraim curls a smooth hand on the nape of Thomas's neck. "You lied to me."

"What?"

"You're not here to work. There's no work here."

"I..." Thomas swallows. "I forgot. I keep waiting is all I know now."

Ephraim shakes his head softly. "Why are you so afraid you lost it?" He pets Thomas's hair back. "You lost it. You did and it's fine that way."

Ephraim kisses him. His forehead first, then his jaw, then his mouth. Ephraim's hands are all over him, soft and heavy. So soft they leave behind a trail on Thomas's skin, a little like water. After they sit on Thomas's bed and drink by the candlelight from the sole bottle of gin Thomas has left.

At dusk, they tour the shores together, Ephraim carrying his walking stick, Thomas examining the sand and scree of every beach and creek.

They find it on the southern shore, half a mile from where Thomas has found Ephraim.

It's a squid, Thomas thinks.

"It's a man," Ephraim says.

If Thomas had listened to you, you'd have asked him, Don't you get it now? But how would he hear you now: you kept yelling during the storms and he kept blocking his ears. You cried harder. He's never heard you. You're scaring him.

Thomas's heart clenches in his throat. Whatever it is, it isn't dead. It advances on the sand, pulling itself forward with its... It's difficult to find a word. It could be arms, for there are hands at the end of them. But there are at least six that Thomas can see, so he should think tentacles, or appendages.

Limbs.

Yeah, he figures, with a shiver of horror gripping his shoulders. Limbs they are.

The thing crawls forward on the beach. It's coming out of the water. This at least is obvious. It's covered in sand--not the clear, grey one from the beach--the darker one that seems like the earth from the bottom of the sea. As it moves forward, Thomas tries to find its head. Even an octopus, or a sea-creature should have a head, right? There should be eyes in there somewhere, a nose, a mouth... Thomas can't find anything.

He gets closer. One of the hands digs in the soil with its fingers. They are fingers alright--bones and joints and all. But the skin is not the right color, Thomas realizes. This close, he can see it's a shade of lilac, catching the red light of the setting sun. A shine runs over it.

Thomas cocks his head--he can't see any head on the thing still. It must breathe from someplace... He reaches out-

Ephraim's stick lands heavily on one limb. A loud crack.

The limb stiffens, attempts to retract. Fails.

Another blow lands. Another limb goes.

The sound. Bones splitting. With no voice at all to go with it. Not even a whimper.

Thomas cannot bear it. He turns and he runs.

Ephraim finds him in the house. It's hours later. "Was that what you'd been waiting for? From the storms? That they'd bring that?" he says.

Thomas shakes his head.

"Do you know what it was?"

Another shake.

Ephraim doesn't say anything then. Thomas must appear distraught enough. He's sitting on the bed. His thoughts aren't right--he couldn't tell you what they were if you asked, but he knows they aren't right. Has there ever only been one bed in here? he wonders. He would have sworn he'd made another one for Ephraim. Broke up his sea chest, filled the last of his canvas with dried seaweed and wood shavings for a mattress. Now it's nowhere to be seen.

Ephraim sits by Thomas's side.

You ask Thomas then, Don't you see it? Lord, where are you?

Ephraim's told Thomas he lied--maybe this means Ephraim knows the truth. Why has he been here? And why for so long? It's been forever, hasn't it? Thomas asks you. That's when you start to fear in earnest: You can't talk to me, Thomas. I'm not there.

Ephraim says, "We should drink."

Thomas means to say no--the gin is gone.

Except it's not: Ephraim has just produced a bottle. It opens with a squeaky sound. Ephraim keeps the cork between his teeth while he pours. Thomas wonders how it could be he didn't realize before now--after all, he's had his tongue in there--but Ephraim's teeth are not teeth--they're one white blade. It's like a beak underneath his lips.

Thomas drinks and the gin tastes like gin. Should it not?

After they are done drinking, Ephraim lays him on the bed. Thomas is spread out--arms and legs open for Ephraim to settle atop him. Ephraim's limbs slip easily under his clothing. Lord, how soft these hands are. One is at his shoulder, cradling his head for a deeper kiss. One is at his hip, tilting it up. One props his knee up until it's wrapped around Ephraim's waist. Another holds Thomas's right wrist down on the mattress.

Oh Thomas, you say. Thomas won't answer you. That's because you aren't here with him. There's nothing else than sea here, and the rocks built from the water, one grain of sand at a time.

They find a walking stick for Thomas. It's just the right height. It's smooth like a bone. But it doesn't slip in his grip. He perspires a lot these days, and as soon as he holds onto something, the sweat glues it to his skin. 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> this is based on the trailer for the movie and on some of my (crushed) hopes that Victor Hugo had finally written a Lovecraftian-ish novel with The Toilers of the Sea. @Terror fam (especially if you are also Les Mis persons): do check out The Toilers of the Sea--it has a Romantic Hero, a Sexy and Shy Priest, a (sigh) Pure Female Character, a Treacherous Bad Guy who betrays France, lots and lots of Courageous Islanders, lots and lots of highly-technical descriptions of the Mighty Sea--_and_ an Evil Octopus.


End file.
